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Month: January 2012

Today is my last full day in Sancerre with one class left to attend and only 24 more hours to experience life in this very old tranquil village. Tomorrow I head back to Paris where it is beautiful but I would not call it tranquil, but I do love the bustle of a big city.

This morning there is a fog sitting on the grape vines below the city center of Sancerre. This morning fog that feels all to familiar to me. For me it is a fog of unknowing of what tomorrow will bring. Like the grape vines below beginning to think of the process of the spring’s renewal and what the earth will give in exchange for a delightful bouquet that can be found in a bunch of wonderfully sun-drenched grapes. Can those vines feel the excitement in the air of that cloud that hides from us what is going on? Each year those vines have to begin again.

Maybe last year was not so great for growing and when the fog settled before the spring it said to the vines, ‘I am sorry this year will be tough. The yield will be less and your taste will carry the struggle you will go through in order to survive the harsh summer to come’. Maybe as the fog caresses the vines this morning it is whispering hope, “hold tight, just a few more cold days and then I will release the warmth of the sun and bring enough rain to sustain you , this year will be a good crop and all of you will survive and thrive.’

It has to be a mystery to the vines as well as us as to why some years are good for growing and other years are good for dying. Yet I believe the vines walk towards their destiny with their hearts fill of hope and knowing that as one vines dies because it could not survive the harsh conditions the one next to it says, ‘I will tell my brothers of your struggle and thorough your fight others will gain wisdom.’

Some of these vines sit on the side of a mountain that is very steep and their lives are much harder than the vines sitting down below in the valley where the rain can sit and drench their ground. Those on the steep incline must take from the rain as it goes by, flowing unstopped down the side of that hill. It is a difficult life for those vines yet they are the ones that produce such an exquisite taste, a taste developed by their struggle and gain. The vines at the foot of the hill have a good taste but their taste is shallow lacking in experience.

Just as in life there are those who would fight to climb the mountain of unknowing first. They push to survive under difficult situations seeking the summit, a climb that would destroy weaker beings. They move forward and struggle to show the fight is always worth it so one can feel the sun as it brightens our days. They know that we fight not for ourselves only but for those who are weaker trying to walk behind us. I seek to be as those vines, I desire to be one of the vines at the top whispering to my brothers and sisters below me that it is ok, there is nothing to fear, keep climbing.

In the sky past the layer of fog are the hints that maybe the sun will shine today after many days of grey, grey skies. The sun that brings life back to an area heavily drenched in fog, a hopeful sign of good days to come. That same sun is doing that job everyday to those on our earth drenched in the fog of forgetting about the climb that is the journey we take in life. Life is climb, a journey up, not across. Unless you seek not to find the summit but are complacent in the mediocrity of an unexplored life, the life of your soul.

There is only growth when we step away from that which we know and that which we would hide behind in order not to grow. When we choose life we choose to step out in front of those who are afraid and cannot. Way-showers, those who move even when the fear is great, pushed on by the yearning for the feel of the sun on their face. The fog has settled around my heart and the sun’s rays are just at the horizon. I hear it! The fog is whispering my name saying sweetly, ‘keep going Leanne we are not done with you yet.’

I stand for rational self interest as a primary value for one’s life. And, understandably I stand against the virtue of selflessness, this utterly false concept that you live your life in service to others. I stand for man’s ability to create, produce and achieve for his own happiness. What do you stand for? Scott Martineau

I read this post this morning and just couldn’t get past the language and frankly the thought. I try hard to let people be who they are but those who would stand in front of others as an expert must be held accountable for what they say, so I had to respond, the following letter was what I sent him, mistakes and all.

I have read and reread this post about what it is you ‘stand for’. I am having trouble with your statement and mostly because you stand in a public forum. The concept of rational self interest is one thing, In the spiritual traditions as well as in the material world the concept of seek and ye shall find, ask and it shall be given, is very much alive. If there is something you desire one can work hard and get it. I get that you are saying one should get off their butt and do the work it takes to make yourself a success at life. Very true, very true, Also very Ayn Rand. Are John Galt?

The idea that we live in an insulated world of just me and mine is how the idea of I must work for “myself” and those who will not and do not shall perish by their own thinking, perish not meaning death just an unsuccessful life.

Here’s the rub, in a world of interconnected beings which we are, everything I do for myself affects the whole. Every trail I blaze can be used for another, every success I have benefits the whole. I as a teacher share my concepts of faith and success, prosperity and love, so that those who would not know would then know. A selfless task of sharing. I share because it lifts me as well as the whole. To assume that grabbing the gold ring and then cleaving it onto my chest for my success and no one else is the very reason this earth is in this mess.

I do not advocate giving away your goods I do not advocate giving away so much as to be reckless to yourself and your family. I do not advocate for stupidity. But this concept that living in the service of others is false, is a huge problem for me. If it were not for those who have done just that, serve others, our world would have no hope. As those who have held the truth away from the masses keeping people ignorant and frankly as slaves, those are the people who live in “a rational self interest world” wrong thought, sorry.

Every act has a consequence and I believe in the power of the word. You have a public forum that I hope you will always use, striving to help others, not hurt. This world concept of mine versus yours has to stop. Yes we are all on our own journey, no one can live for another. Yet those who walk the path of light have been given a gift that will extinguish if one chooses only their self interest. Not to share and understand that your success is everyone’s success and their failure is your failure is to have missed the point of a light worker altogether. It is not living selflessly to be in service to others each journey is important to that universal energy which created us all. Being in service to others is what we were told to do, by whom you ask?, hmmm, is that life in your chest, every breath you take, every beat of your heart, yah that’s who…there is a bigger picture, we do not know everything and cannot but we can be “in service to each other”

I would have posted this (on his facebook page) but I do not need 10,000 emails from others nor do I need to defend my beliefs to 10,000 others.. I just wanted to share my thoughts with you and implore you to be careful with your words, they are vibration affecting many souls, oh you who would not be selfless, no offense Scott but you wanted to know what I ‘stand for’, so there you go

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.e. e. cummings

Found this quote this morning and it about sums it up. A fight begins in me on the many mornings when I wake and find I have forgotten. When the past is a cloud wrapped around me caused by dreams of regret and pain. I wake in that fog of forgetting where I am and why am I here. The loneliness of loss, and missed opportunities rain on me. It falls as tears running down my face tearing at the fabric of my soul. Oh my God not again.

I have become sick of this game. It is like a serious of trials where I must stand before my accuser defending myself over and over again. I scream out, “It’s my life, I get to live it the way I want, and as who I am!” said with as much passion as I can muster in the face of such an accuser. This morning I added as I looked to the heavens “I am a child of God and I will answer only to God! I will answer to no one else!”, said with a little more conviction this time. Then my ever popular phrase, “you are not the boss of me, so there, back off , get away from me and while foot stomping, you better let me go”Accuser backs off, “chicken” I yell as I run back to my life.

I have paid a dear price for my freedom that is when I can remember that I have it. For the world would often have me believe I am not free and I owe somebody somewhere something, never a defined anything, as it changes with everyday. Awww, the game of life.

As e.e. cummings so beautifully puts it, it is a fight to be who you really are and you have to keep fighting. And I do. And I will. I have watched countless people turn over their lives to something other than the power within themselves. And I tire of the countless spiritual teachers who would seek to take away power rather than empower, can they not smell the karma in those acts. We are unique pieces of a greater whole. We are part of a grand design connected like a single being with multiple bodies minds and hearts, if you will, vast beyond our understanding.

We are limited in our own minds, prisoners of our own thinking, falsely mistaken every time we identify with this said limitation. What e.e. says can be used like a mantra, fight for your voice, fight for your identity, fight for your way of seeing and finally fight for how you feel in your heart. The fight changes as your understanding of reality matures and this is good, it is growth. But never give up fighting for as you move to the next level of understanding there will more naysayers, those who would seek to utilise your strengths and power and it’s not for them unless, you are giving it away.

Fight like you mean it. Fight because you know you are somebody, gifted, unique, and part of a dynamic and beautiful whole being. I will! I do! Will you?

I wake up in the morning and the sky is as dark as pitch. This picture is out my window at almost 8am. I thought Minnesota was dark in the winter nope. I go somewhere to get out of the dark of Minnesota and frankly the cold and here I am nearly at the same geographical location and worse it seems. I am at the top of a hill and that is still the picture at 8am. Ah the dark.

I am amused at the dark and it’s attempt to keep us down not knowing where we are going or having the light to figure it out. When I have to get up in the morning for class, thank you God it is only 2 mornings a week, I have to check the clock, check the clock, check the clock, the is no outside sign of the impending light of day, you just know it will be dark, get up and yes it’s 7am. Though I would lay money on every time I look at that clock it is wrong, wrong, no way it’s 7am, 3 am for sure, check the clock on my phone, yup 7am, pitch black, 7:30am pitch black, finish your homework, make some coffee, it’s going to be light eventually.

It’s how I feel right now about so many people and organizations spreading fear of upcoming doom for 2012 and beyond. Come on people, snake oil sales men have been around since the beginning of time and every single time chicken little proclaimed the sky was falling the sun came up the next day. Isn’t it comforting to know there is a higher power in charge. Really, if it were up to naysayers we would be so dead so long ago, or in 1984, or 1999, or 2000, or or or or or….

Silly as it seems this line came to me in the movie G. I. Jane. I watched this movie when I was searching for films with strong female leads looking for the courage and strength I needed to forge ahead as just me, a single woman of power and means. On this trip that is the image I am once again trying to hold. Here I have watched both movies about Coco Chanel. Another strong woman and very much a woman with her own voice. If I was a young woman I would so have my hand up saying I want to be one of those.

Fast forward to January 2012.

All weekend long I have been having issues being alone. Not being alone, just that I have worked hard to get over just taking it and have tried to put myself out there and ask for some company, you know stuff like that. Each time was a complete failure. Like that night I climbed up and down the city streets trying to find the couples house who had invited me over, failure, followed by more missed opportunities, I had had enough. After the last time I decided fine, wasn’t going to do it again. If God wanted me to have a social life he/she would have to put it right in front of me.

I woke up this morning feeling just fine. I had gotten dressed last night and had gone out to where I thought a jazz band was going to play, no luck. I either had the time or location wrong, just went back to the apartment and read. Clearly saying whatever, loudly, though not in French. This morning I looked out the window awesome day, sunny, birds singing, I was going to be working on homework and you know how distracting birdsong can be, I felt like I should be out there, walking.

I was having this weird feeling inside of me.

I thought maybe something was up with one of the kids but it was way to early in the morning for that. So I got dressed and for some reason put some money in my pocket, thinking maybe I would get a coffee and headed out. I had forgotten it is a festival day here of some kind and as I looked right down my street there was an open air market going on. I headed over as that feeling in my stomach grew more intense. Kept walking, came to a table with a wonderful cup I just loved it for some reason, got brave asked the cost, in French, bartered in French made a deal, treasure is mine. Ah the sweet smell of success. So I needed money after all, cool.

As I moved away from the table a voice aimed at me, ‘so you missed having a glass of wine with us’. After 2 days of trying to locate their house, finally finding it but they had not been home, there they were right in front of me. We laughed together as I explained trying to find it in the fog, going the wrong way and those scary dogs. I am heading over again this evening for that glass of wine. God had put it right in front of me. I began walking back to my apartment with my treasure and a social engagement.

It may not seem like so much but I had done it. I had kept going even when I didn’t want to. I went outside when I felt a strange feeling, all in all, what I realized was I had stopped feeling sorry for myself and was just doing it anyway. At first I felt this need to be validated just because I had become brave enough finally to live again but, the Universe with all of God’s love put many obstacles in my way. It was making sure I meant what I was doing, that I was really ready even as I understood I may well be hurt again.

And as I walked with the sun in my face, feeling pretty good, the line came right in to my head. I have never seen a wild thing sorry for itself…. this wild thing says me neither….

The sky has been grey all day. It has been hazy, overcast, and drizzly(my word), in a bunch of words, it has been a dreadful day. So on my walk back from class I am overwhelmed with sadness and loneliness. It is so difficult to stay up and not succumb to the energy of this day, Friday the fricking 13th.I had tears in my eyes as I finally reached my door.

I did it again, I got brave last night at the cooking class and asked this other female student who is traveling alone if she would like to go to dinner tonight. It’s the weekend and dinner is much harder to eat out alone and there are a few really good restaurants here in Sancerre. We made no firm plans just a, ‘sure sounds like fun’ thing. Problem was this morning.

There is another woman here traveling alone and at the wine tasting earlier in the week I had noticed the rather noticeable signs we lovely women give to each other when you run into a personality that is either threatening or just puts you out of the limelight. I got it, she doesn’t like me. For me it’s the big ‘whatever’, said very dramatically. I’ve gone through so much a person not liking me is as small a thing as a fly buzzing around my head.

This morning both of them together I go over to say hi, other woman walks away, stuck woman has to say I was thinking so and so would like to go to dinner as well, ‘of course’, I said knowing immediately what had happened and what was going to happen. No real skills needed here.

There are no phones in these apartments if you don’t make plans while together well it’s almost impossible to coordinate what you don’t know. Both are staying at apartments in the school while mine is a distance away. She would have had to make a time right then, leave a note or come down when my class was over which would have been simply down the stairs through the must have a security code door, she didn’t. She happened to say they were going to Paris together in the morning, blah blah blah you get the picture.

I walk into the kitchen area of my apartment just sick over human relations, why do they have to be so hard? I am having this dawning realization that soon I will be as hard as nails, or is it as hard as steel or is it as hard as iron. Whatever! What I do know is there will be nothing left that can move me as I just stop reaching out at all. Do you know what happens to a piece of coal when it is put into the fire of pressure and change.

This blog is called Livingwords11, that 11 is my transformation, this diamond not yet fully transformed has been dumped into a fire that is going to make me so bright you will need shades to see me.

With wine glass in hand tears in my eyes. I looked out my window into this ridiculous day of nothing but clouds, haze and there in the sky, well you can see, the sun peaked out at me. The clouds parted allowing me to see an ever so slight piece of the sky. Was that sun trying to make a last-minute plea, Leanne it is always darkest before the dawn, on a every life a little rain must fall, I am here, I see you, I hear you. Was the Universe talking to me when it seems no one else will? Was that break in the clouds, and it was just a break the sun went down soon after, a message of hope from my creator?

Let’s talk about disappointment for a minute. I know all of you wanting to jump on the spiritual bandwagon trying to help me deal with disappointment, it’s God’s will blah blah blah, line up and wait your turn.

I have been fighting with myself for the last 3 years. Pulling myself back from the edge of despair over and over again. Obviously there are big lessons for me here. Pain is that indication, at least for me, the more pain the more important the lesson. Choose what you want to believe, but I feel that getting my ass handed to me over and over again is not me being a bad judge of character but an indication that I have a thought stuck in my head about how things are supposed to be, suppose to go. After a series of disappointments from some men and women both ‘spiritual’ and otherwise I have just about given up in the idea of being social. I just am tired of it, this lack of integrity on the planet. Ok so I was being super harsh really, just protecting myself from the pain of letting someone close just to have them careless about me, really. Acting proactive while being reactive.

Still with me?

I am here by myself as I am at home. This is an intense period of being alone, both forced and desired, depends on the day. Today while walking to school I ran into a couple who asked me if I was English, pissed me off at first, Come on don’t I look French to you? Well she had heard me earlier, there you go! So we stood talking for a few minutes. I got brave enough to ask if they would like to have dinner with me one night. Just like that, right out of my mouth, I never do that!

They invited me to their house for some wine. Awesome! So after class I went back to my apartment to get a bottle of the wine I had gotten at the winery yesterday. Down the hill, back up the hill, off towards the direction he gave me. It became very foggy and cool outside, then it got very dark and I walked where I thought I was to go. I couldn’t see a thing, these freaking dogs heard me tell them to shut up in multiple languages. I challenged them to come over that fence if that wanted a piece of me, I was getting so mad. Where did he say it was? I felt stupid, he made it sound so simple but when I got down to where the turn was there was of course, 3 possibilities. I tried 3 times, up and down, up and down, up and down, in the dark, in the fog, it was no use.

I was so disappointed and I felt rejected by every body. I felt rejected by my God. I felt slapped in the face for putting myself out there, for getting excited not to have to sit alone another night. But alone I walked back to my apartment with my bottle, which is in front of me, right now, open, first glass down…..

I tell you what, if this universe thinks that that small act of screwing me out of a nice evening of good wine and conversation is going to send me back to the hell I just came out of well, you have no idea who you are messing with. You want to see strength, you want to see what, ‘so the f*&k what’ looks like….